On the interests of the parties involved in the Syrian conflict and the role of the media

In the event of major military conflicts that risk considerable humanitarian and economic consequences, it is useful to examine the interests of all parties involved as well as the role that the media plays in reporting the events.

On the surface it’s straightforward: the U.S. wants to liberate Syria from a brutal dictator who is attacking his own people with poison gas. But beneath the surface there is something very different going on.

Finucane, Sami al-Saadi and Khaled el-Musri: will we once again just 'move on' from the murky conduct of MI6 and the CIA?

This, of course, is a rather dodgy situation for America’s Protectors. After all, Bashar al-Assad of Syria is now supposed to be the devil incarnate, the latest Middle East Hitler, the man whom Obama and La Clinton would like to have liquidated. So why did the Protectors send Mr Arar to him? Well, of course, a decade ago, Assad was our mate, wasn’t he?

I’ve been collecting the stories of unreleased documents for several years. Now I have chosen 11 examples that were created—and buried—by both Democratic and Republican administrations and which cover assassinations, spying, torture, 50-year-old historical events, presidential directives with classified titles and…trade negotiations.

The latest leak, published by the Associated Press (AP), purported to be an Iranian diagram showing the physics of a nuclear blast, but scientists quickly pointed out an elementary mistake that cast doubt on its significance and authenticity.

The Defense Department said in March that it could not locate any photographs or video taken during the raid or showing bin Laden’s body. It also said it could not find any images of bin Laden’s body on the Vinson. The Pentagon also said it could not find any death certificate, autopsy report or results of DNA identification tests for bin Laden, or any pre-raid materials discussing how the government planned to dispose of bin Laden’s body if he were killed.

Note that all costs are median estimates for the first three months of any action. Costs projected longer than that involved too many variables, according to the group, and would be inaccurate to report.

Most Americans afforded Obama nothing. Most votes for him were likely against Romney. Money power in America chooses candidates and winners. Corporate manipulated and controlled electronic voting machines have final say.

In Saudi Arabia and Israel, Signals That Iran Has Retaliation in Works

The Saudi and Qatari governments would understand the message clearly; Iran can attack your economy. In effect: we don’t need to shut the Strait of Hormuz, we will shut down your computer instead. [...] But the virus and the drone together sent a signal, don’t underestimate Iran.

Ample ink is spilled over debating whether the US media is biased in favor of Republicans or Democrats. It is neither. The overwhelming, driving bias of the US media is subservience to power, whoever happens to be wielding it.

The office, the Pan American Health Organization, not only is relying on the food and beverage industry for advice on how to fight obesity. For the first time in its 110-year history, it has taken hundreds of thousands of dollars in money from the industry.

Martin Sheen and Woody Harrelson set for 9/11 'truther' film September Morn

Asner, who has won seven Emmys, has several times urged a new investigation into 9/11. In 2010, he told an interviewer: "This country – which is the greatest, strongest country that ever existed in the world, in terms of power – supposedly had a defence that could not be penetrated all these years. But all of that was eradicated by 19 Saudi Arabians, supposedly. Some of whom didn't even know how to fly.

Dr Goldacre describes the routine corruption of what is supposed to be an objective scientific process designed to assess whether new drugs work, whether they are better than drugs already on the market and whether their side effects are a price worth paying for any benefits they might convey. The result is that doctors, and the patients they treat, are hobbled by needless ignorance.

France has announced it will uphold a ban on GMO crops, while activists and farmers in California and elsewhere in the U.S. are pushing for GMO foods to be labeled in stores and for the government to further investigate the health impact of Monsanto’s products.

Speaking at a Washington Institute for Near East Policy policy forum luncheon on “How to Build US-Israeli Coordination on Preventing an Iranian Nuclear Breakout,” WINEP director of research Patrick Clawson listed a raft of historical examples of where governments have either staged or exploited attacks in order to become embroiled in war.

In other words, the 1% (or less) are using money vacuumed out of our world to invest in “democratic” politics -- and as with any other investment, they naturally expect a return, whichever party ends up in the White House. Isn’t it time, under the circumstances, to bring back a few of those choice words like “plutocrat” and “monied interests” from the late nineteenth century, that previous moment when a Gilded Age fused with a round of recessions and depressions

Until five years ago, she was often sick and suffered from all sorts of infections. In the course of researching these problems, she discovered a liver flush that ultimately cured her, improving her condition to a level better than it had ever been. Geertje van der Burgh on the how and why of the liver flush.

The Times adds that the US is also reluctantly considering previously rejected covert action against Iran, including air strikes on power plants and other sites that could impact Iranian civilian populations, as well as a "clandestine" strike against Iran's nuclear facilities, much like the strike Israel launched against Syria in 2007.

Reuters reports that Khamenei told the gathering, "Our motto is nuclear energy for all and nuclear weapons for none. Iran will never pursue nuclear weapons but it will not give up its national right to peaceful nuclear energy."

Aoki [...] was the subject of the biography Samurai Among Panthers: On Race, Resistance And A Pardoxical Life, which traced his ascent within the organization, where he became the highest-ranking non-black member of the party.

“We can be proud of the significant contribution we are making to the fall of the [Al] Assad regime,” an official from Germany’s BND foreign intelligence service told Bild am Sonntag. [...] Britain’s Sunday Times newsaper also said British intelligence was helping rebels launch successful attacks on government forces with information gathered from their listening posts in nearby Cyprus.

No, the "targets" here are me and you: everyone, all of the time. In the name of "national security", the capacity is being built to identify, track and document any citizen constantly and continuously.

Administration officials insist they will not provide arms to the rebel forces. Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar are already financing those efforts. But American officials said that the United States would provide more communications training and equipment to help improve the combat effectiveness of disparate opposition forces in their widening, sustained fight against Syrian Army troops.

Journalism v. propaganda in reporting on the attack on Israeli tourists in Bulgaria

By “identified,” “confirmed” and “corroborated” Iranian and Hezbollah responsibility, what The New York Times means is this: American officials asserted that this was so, even as they “declined to provide additional details” and even though “the investigation was still under way.”

It is clear that Mitt Romney will do Israel’s bidding and it is also true that President Barack Obama has painted himself into a corner on Iran in particular and might well agree to an attack on [Syria and Iran] due to political pressure from the Israel Lobby.

So what we see, in 2008, at the same meeting, are the leaders of precisely those organisations identified in the WikiLeaks cables as the conduit (the Democracy Council) and recipient (the MJD) of large amounts of state department money.

“I take great pride in the fact that, in the last ten years, over a number of jobs, I’ve been involved in an issue of global concern, and I feel that I as an individual [have made] an impact in the outcome of events.”

Swiss bank UBS is among the best-connected City institutions with three Conservative peers on its payroll: Lord Brittan of Spennithorne, who is its vice-chairman; Lord Garel-Jones, who is managing director; and Lord Waldegrave of North Hill, who is registered as an adviser.

Jon Williams, the BBC World News editor, in effect dishes his own “coverage”, citing a western official who described the “psy-ops” operation against Syria as “brilliant”. As brilliant as the destruction of Libya, and Iraq, and Afghanistan.

In fact, stripped of all the camouflaging financial verbiage, the crimes the defendants and their co-conspirators committed were virtually indistinguishable from the kind of thuggery practiced for decades by the Mafia, which has long made manipulation of public bids for things like garbage collection and construction contracts a cornerstone of its business.

Robert Fisk: Mubarak's 300,000-strong army of thugs remains in business despite elections

Today's military played an equally shrewd but different game: they insisted Mubarak go on trial – bread and circuses for the masses, dramatic sentences to keep their minds off the future – while realigning the old Mubarakites to preserve their own privileges.

Leaked documents show a real threat to the international flow of information

The U.N. process is mind-numbing, but as Vincent Cerf, one of the founders of the Web, recently told Congress, this U.N. involvement means "the open Internet has never been at a higher risk than it is now."

“In case of an attack, political pressure on the regime will disappear. If Israel will attack, there is no doubt in my mind that this will also provide them with the justification to go ahead and move quickly to nuclear weapons.”

Even more worrying is Obama’s apparently wilful sabotage of two diplomatic initiatives, one by Europe’s foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, the other by Kofi Annan. Ashton has been leading an attempt by the P5+1 to negotiate a ‘win-win’ deal with Iran over its nuclear programme, while Annan has been struggling to find a negotiated way out of the murderous Syrian crisis. Obama seems intent on compromising both initiatives.

[...] the reason for that is that the IAEA's function in the politics surrounding the Iranian nuclear issue is to keep Iran in the dock of international opinion while the negotiations between the Iranians and the P5+1 continue.

The deliberate targeting of rescuers and mourners by CIA drones was first exposed by the Bureau in February 2012, in a major joint investigation with the Sunday Times. On more than a dozen occasions between 2009 and June 2011, the CIA attacked rescuers as they tried to retrieve the dead and injured.

However, a new virus identified by leading digital security firm Kaspersky Lab, is reportedly capable of not only embedding itself onto computer systems without being identified by traditional anti-virus applications, but able to execute total surveillance [...].

The Israeli exercise, which ended May 13, practiced the new American ABS doctrine of simultaneously massing large-scale sea and air strength against Iran on two seas, in this case, the Mediterranean and Persian Gulf. It also drilled operating in unison with their American counterparts under the same doctrine.

That claim was presented in a way that suggested it was supported by intelligence. It now appears, however, to have been merely a propaganda line designed to support the Barack Obama administration's strategy of diplomatic coercion on Iran.

Roubini, who warned last year that a perfect storm was coming for the global economy in 2013, said the euro zone will “eventually break up,” and expects two or three euro zone members to exit the bloc over the next few years. “Europe will be lucky if it ends up in stagnation like Japan for the next 10 years,” he added.

Operation "self-deception" began in December 1991, in an office building in the Dutch city of Maastricht, the capital of the southeastern province of Limburg. The European heads of state and government had come together to reach the decision of the century, namely to introduce the euro by 1999.

In the past five years, the U.S. has sent close to $100 million in military aide to Bahrain—a hefty amount for such a small country—much of it earmarked for “stabilization operations” that include training and equipping police and paramilitary forces. And Bahrain’s leadership is intimately linked to that of Saudi Arabia, America’s greatest ally in the region.

Report: U.S. operated inside Iran to collect information on nuclear program

According to U.S. officials, the drones, that have been scouring dozens of sites throughout Iran, have given the Obama administration confidence that the U.S. will see any activity that would indicate Tehran decided to assemble a nuclear bomb.

Israel 'would not be able to destroy Iran's nuclear programme with pre-emptive air strike'

Israel would not be able to destroy Iran's nuclear programme in a pre-emptive air strike with its current airforce, forcing its leadership to look for alternative means of attack, an influential defence report has concluded.

Study: children 13 times more likely to develop narcolepsy after Swine Flu vaccination

They found that in those who were vaccinated the rate of narcolepsy was nine per 100,000 compared to 0.7 per 100,000 unvaccinated children, or 13 times lower. [...] Pandemrix was the main vaccine used in Britain against the swine flu epidemic in which six million people were vaccinated. It was formulated specifically for the swine flu pandemic virus and is no longer in use.

How the US uses sexual humiliation as a political tool to control the masses

These recent laws criminalizing protest, and giving local police [...] powers to terrify and traumatise people who have not gone through due process or trial, are being set up to work in concert with a see-all-all-the-time surveillance state. [...] James Bamford wrote in Wired magazine that the new facility in Bluffdale, Utah, is being built, where the NSA will look at billions of emails, texts and phone calls. Similar legislation is being pushed forward in the UK.

An adviser to the special-operations community told me that the links between the United States and M.E.K. activities inside Iran had been long-standing. “Everything being done inside Iran now is being done with surrogates,” he said.

If the United States concludes that sanctions have failed to blunt the Iranian nuclear threat and that an Israeli strike is too dangerous, we could be hearing a lot more about that Massive Ordnance Penetrator.

Pentagon war game forecasts U.S. would be pulled into a new war if Israel strikes Iran

The war games' results have "raised fears among top American planners that it may be impossible to preclude American involvement in any escalating confrontation with Iran," the Times Mark Mazzetti and Thom Shanker wrote

Syrian activists are being targeted by a fake version of Google's YouTube video site which plants malware on the PCs of people who leave comments on videos shown there, the Electronic Frontier Foundation has warned.

On the interests of the parties involved in the Syrian conflict and the role of the media

In the event of major military conflicts that risk considerable humanitarian and economic consequences, it is useful to examine the interests of all parties involved as well as the role that the media plays in reporting the events.

On the surface it’s straightforward: the U.S. wants to liberate Syria from a brutal dictator who is attacking his own people with poison gas. But beneath the surface there is something very different going on.